Next-gen dev budgets unlikely to change, says Zelnick

Development budgets are unlikely to change significantly on next-gen consoles, the CEO of Take-Two has claimed.

Speaking to investors, as reported by Edge, Strauss Zelnick said the publisher had no reason to believe costs would rise from current levels, and claimed the company had even managed to tighten control of its expenditure recently.

“We don’t have any reason to believe our development budgets will change significantly,” said Zelnick.

“If anything we have become – group-wide – much tighter in terms of how we spend our money. We can’t say specifically, but no we don’t expect to see a meaningful change in what it costs us to release these top quality products.”

Zelnick made a similar statement during an earnings call last year, stating at the time that Take-Two believed it could actually be easier to make titles for next-gen consoles, depending on how the technology comes together.

The long-awaited PS4 and next Xbox are expected to be significantly more powerful than the current generation systems, potentially allowing for game creation on an even bigger scale. But it remains to be seen however just how ‘easy’ the new hardware will be to develop for, and how it compares to current systems.